The Fancy Sketch Drive was a MASSIVE success! All together with sketches and donations we raised almost $3500 to go towards my $5400 new AC unit bill. The new unit is installed and cooling the house wonderfully. The rest is on credit and will haunt me for years to come. All joking aside, this is just one more time that I am completely floored and humbled by the generosity and compassion of you Fancy Bastards. You guys are a confusingly bright ray of human decency in an often dim and apathetic world, and I am extraordinarily grateful to have you as a community.

Sketch shipping update: The first 50 or so sketches from last month have all shipped (except for 1 or 2 odd cases). If you’re in the US you should have been emailed a tracking number (and should already have the sketch by now), and if you’re international then you should cross your fingers and hope for the best. Experience teaches me that at least two of your will have your sketches stapled to the tire of a Humvee, driven down a mountain made of fire and mud and eventually returned to me with a note written in a dead language that poorly translates to “Package Fuck.” Those are the breaks, and if you are so sadly broken then I will make it right for you. I will start drawing the remaining 60+ (everyone that ordered during the AC fundraiser) when I get back from Toronto.

So the plot is thickening… or coagulating, or whatever a mixture of 1 part raccoon blood to 4 parts moonshine liquor does. Just a few more comics and this story will be wrapped up. We’ll know what happened to Eli the night he was helicoptered away from the Avengers showing, and what role Boxcar Pete played in his weeks long state of bedrunkitude. SPOILERS: Pete is NOT Eli’s father. Eli’s father is a retired Mexican Wrestler. Everyone knows Hoboes are bound by their code not to don luchador masks, as not to soil them with burnt beans which would be both disrespectful and rude.

COMMENTERS: What’s the craziest improvised “weapon” you’ve ever seen or heard of being used in a fight? Was it better than a half a raccoon stuck on an old shovel? The answer is no. No it wasn’t. I’ve only been in 2 or 3 real fights in my entire life and all of them were before I entered high school. Once, in 6th grade, a kid tried to start a fight with me when I was walking home. I was talking all sorts of shit about his “momma” and how said momma owed me “money” because I was her “pimp.” That little fucker up and pulled out a compass from his Trapper Keeper and tried to stab my ass with it. A FUCKING COMPASS! A lesson to would-be purchasers of mathematical school supplies. A compass EASILY doubles as a murder weapon. Protractors are mostly harmless.

I hope you enjoy this comic as much as I enjoyed drawing thatraccoon. What weird, stupid animals. Hoboes, I mean. Not raccoons. Raccoons are majestic, like antelope and those bleached cow skulls that cartoons would lead me to believe are randomly strewn about the desert. Raccoons, or “Land Piranha,” are nature’s bitning machines. They say a raccoons bite brings good luck… I mean disease. Good disease. No, that’s not right either. HORRIBLE disease. That’s it. What I’m saying is they’re great and I bet they want to be domesticated and walked around parks on leashes and to NOT eat your face off the moment you let your guard down or remove your raccoon-proof helmet cage. Protip: NEVER REMOVE YOUR RACCOON PROOF HELMET CAGE BECAUSE THAT IS WHEN THEY EAT YOUR FACE OFF. Can you tell that I’ve been awake for 2 days? I CAN’T!

COMMENTERS: Have you ever gone up against a wild animal? Were you toe to toe with a particularly nasty fainting goat? I ferret bit through the meat of my finger once. Have you every known anyone that tried to domesticate a wild animal? Did said animal eventually drag that person around by their genitals before ripping them off? No? Then I bet it wasn’t one of those diaper chimps thats always doing that sort of thing.

So finally, Eli is out of the house and off to seek out Boxcar Pete. I’m finding that when writing storylines 3 panels at a time and only every other day or so, it takes a REALLY long time to get things moving. A couple of minutes of conversation can take more than a week’s worth of comics to get out. I am very much in the “figuring this out as I go along” category with regards to these story lines. It’s like that thing where you are having fun, but also terrified? The Batman ride at Six Flags? Yes. It is like the Batman ride. Especially because sometimes everything runs in reverse with no warning and something is cackling maniacally in the distance, then you throw up. That metaphor works for pretty much everything.

COMMENTERS: Do you have any stories to share about setting out on an adventure on your own? When I was 17 I drove up to Dallas from SE Texas to visit some friends for a week. During that time I met a girl, and decided to move 300 miles away from my family so we could maybe date or whatever. Thirteen years later we are quite married, intensely not tired of each other and entirely parents to a wonderful and ridiculously intelligent little girl. Sometimes you just have to shut your eyes and leap.

I suspect I won’t get around to making an actual comic aboutThe Dark Knight Rises during this storyline, so I feel like I need to direct you to the Fancy Bastard Facebook Group threads on the subject, both spoiler free and SUPER SPOILERY. I have shared SO MANY OPINIONS on that particular bit of cinematic Batmanery and such a STRONG DESIRE to share them.

COMMENTERS: If you have Batman opinions and don’t want to join the Facebook discussion, feel free to post them below. If you are going to post spoilers, please start your comment with !!!SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!

Alternately: Any experience, positive or negative with homebrew, moonshine, or other jars of miscellaneous clear or brown liquids?